Neuroscience

Natural forgetting reversibly modulates engram expression

1. James D O'Leary
2. Rasmus Bruckner
3. Livia Autore
4. Tomás J Ryan

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is an important paper on the role of engrams and relevant conditions that influence memory and forgetting. The variety of methods used, namely, behavioural, labeling, interrogation, immunohistochemistry, microscopy, pharmacology, computational, are exemplary and provide convincing evidence for the role of engrams in the dentate gyrus in memory retrieval and forgetting. This examination will be of interest broadly across behavioural and neural science communities.

Reviewed by eLife

Multisensory integration operates on correlated input from unimodal transient channels

1. Cesare V Parise
2. Marc O Ernst

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study evaluates a model for multisensory correlation detection, focusing on the detection of correlated transients in visual and auditory stimuli. Overall, the experimental design is sound and the evidence is compelling. The synergy between the experimental and theoretical aspects of the paper is strong, and the work will be of interest to both neuroscientists and psychologists working in the domain of sensory processing and perception.

Reviewed by eLife

Three-photon in vivo imaging of neurons and glia in the medial prefrontal cortex with sub-cellular resolution

1. Falko Fuhrmann
2. Felix C. Nebeling
3. Fabrizio Musacchio
4. Manuel Mittag
5. Stefanie Poll
6. Monika Müller
7. Eleonora Ambrad Giovannetti
8. Michael Maibach
9. Barbara Schaffran
10. Emily Burnside
11. Ivy Chi Wai Chan
12. Alex Simon Lagurin
13. Nicole Reichenbach
14. Sanjeev Kaushalya
15. Hans Fried
16. Stefan Linden
17. Gabor C. Petzold
18. Gaia Tavosanis
19. Frank Bradke
20. Martin Fuhrmann

Reviewed by Arcadia Science

GABAergic inhibition in human hMT+ predicts visuo-spatial intelligence mediated through the frontal cortex

1. Yuan Gao
2. Yong-Chun Cai
3. Dong-Yu Liu
4. Juan Yu
5. Jue Wang
6. Ming Li
7. Bin Xu
8. Tengfei Wang
9. Gang Chen
10. Georg Northoff
11. Ruiliang Bai
12. Xue Mei Song

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study adopts a comprehensive approach: functional connectivity, biochemistry, and psychophysics to reveal a holistic understanding of the relationship between GABA-ergic inhibition in the human MT+ region and visuo-spatial intelligence. The evidence supporting the conclusion is convincing. The result advances our understanding of how the human MT+ is assemble into complex cognition as an intellectual hub, and will be of interest to researchers in psychology, cognitive science, and neuroscience.

Reviewed by eLife

A distributed brain response predicting the facial expression of acute nociceptive pain

1. Marie-Eve Picard
2. Miriam Kunz
3. Jen-I Chen
4. Michel-Pierre Coll
5. Etienne Vachon-Presseau
6. Tor D Wager
7. Pierre Rainville

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Picard et al. propose a Facial Expression Pain Signature (FEPS) derived from functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data to predict facial expressions associated with painful heat stimulation. This important work advances our understanding of the brain mechanisms associated with facial expressions of pain. It provides solid evidence that facial expressions of pain contain information that is complementary to other pain-related brain processes. The work will be of broad interest to researchers from varied fields ranging from neurosciences to psychology and affective sciences.

Reviewed by eLife

Sensitivity to vocal emotions emerges in newborns at 37 weeks gestational age

1. Xinlin Hou
2. Peng Zhang
3. Licheng Mo
4. Cheng Peng
5. Dandan Zhang

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This is an important study on changes in newborns' neural abilities to distinguish auditory signals at 37 weeks of gestation. The evidence of change in neural discrimination as a function of gestational age is convincing, but, as the authors acknowledge, further control of the acoustic signals and infants' language environment is necessary for the results to be used in clinical applications. The work contributes to the field of neurodevelopment.

Reviewed by eLife

Heterozygous expression of a Kcnt1 gain-of-function variant has differential effects on somatostatin- and parvalbumin-expressing cortical GABAergic neurons

1. Amy N Shore
2. Keyong Li
3. Mona Safari
4. Alshaima'a M Qunies
5. Brittany D Spitznagel
6. C David Weaver
7. Kyle Emmitte
8. Wayne Frankel
9. Matthew C Weston

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Shore et al. report the important effects of a heterozygous mutation in the KCNT1 potassium channel on ion currents and firing behavior of excitatory and inhibitory neurons in the cortex of KCNT1-Y777H mice. The authors provide solid evidence of physiological differences between this heterozygous mutation and their previous work with homozygotes. The reviewers appreciated the inclusion of recordings in ex vivo slices and dissociated cortical neurons, as well as the additional evidence showing an increase in persistent sodium currents in parvalbumin-positive interneurons in heterozygotes.

Reviewed by eLife

ThermoMaze behavioral paradigm for assessing immobility-related brain events in rodents

1. Mihály Vöröslakos
2. Yunchang Zhang
3. Kathryn McClain
4. Roman Huszár
5. Aryeh Rothstein
6. György Buzsáki

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  The ThermoMaze represents a valuable tool to control the rest/exploration states of an animal. The data, collected and analyzed using solid and validated methodology, demonstrate its use in addressing previously elusive questions. This will facilitate future work with more in-depth analysis of place cell activity to further support for some of the claims.

Reviewed by eLife

Sequential replacement of PSD95 subunits in postsynaptic supercomplexes is slowest in the cortex

1. Katie Morris
2. Edita Bulovaite
3. Takeshi Kaizuka
4. Sebastian Schnorrenberg
5. Candace T Adams
6. Noboru Komiyama
7. Lorena Mendive-Tapia
8. Seth GN Grant
9. Mathew H Horrocks

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  This important study explores how cells maintain subcellular structures in the face of constant protein turnover, focusing on neurons, whose synapses must be kept stable over long periods of time for memory storage. Using proteins from knock-in mice expressing tagged variants of the synaptic scaffold protein PSD95, nanobodies, and multiple imaging methods, there is compelling evidence that PSD95 proteins form complexes at synapses in which single protein copies are sequentially replaced over time. This happens at different rates in different synapse types and is slowest in areas where PSD95 lifetime is the longest and long-term memories are stored. While of general relevance to cell biology, these findings are of particular interest to neuroscientists because they support the hypothesis put forward by Francis Crick that stable synapses, and hence stable long-term memories, can be maintained in the face of short protein lifetimes by sequential replacement of individual subunits in synaptic protein complexes.

Reviewed by eLife

A non-conducting role of the Cav1.4 Ca2+ channel drives homeostatic plasticity at the cone photoreceptor synapse

1. J Wesley Maddox
2. Gregory J Ordemann
3. Juan AM de la Rosa Vázquez
4. Angie Huang
5. Christof Gault
6. Serena R Wisner
7. Kate Randall
8. Daiki Futagi
9. Nihal A Salem
10. Dayne Mayfield
11. Boris V Zemelman
12. Steven DeVries
13. Mrinalini Hoon
14. Amy Lee

• Curated by eLife

  eLife assessment

  Based on analyses of retinae from genetically modified mice, and from wild-type ground squirrel and macaque, employing microscopic imaging, electrophysiology, and pharmacological manipulations, this valuable study on the role of Cav1.4 calcium channels in cone photoreceptor cells (i) shows that the expression of a Cav1.4 variant lacking calcium conductivity supports the development of cone synapses beyond what is observed in the complete absence of Cav1.4, and (ii) indicates that the cone pathway can partially operate even without calcium flux through Cav1.4 channels, thus preserving behavioral responses under bright light. The evidence for the function of Cav1.4 protein in synapse development is convincing and in agreement with a closely related earlier study by the same authors on rod photoreceptors. The mechanism of compensation of Cav1.4 loss by Cav3 remains unclear but appears to involve post-transcriptional processes. As congenital Cav1.4 dysfunction can cause stationary night blindness, this work relates to a wide range of neuroscience topics, from synapse biology to neuro-ophthalmology.

Reviewed by eLife